Stupid

     So much to ridicule tonight, starting with kindergarten, whose grownups apparently are unacquainted with five- and six-year-old people. This week's Big Dumb Idea concerns a Halloween party during school tomorrow. Here's what I think when I hear "Halloween party": Halloween costumes. Yes? No. The directive is for the child to "dress as your favorite story book character." Never mind that my child wants to be a fairy queen ballerina ghost, a costume she has been planning for weeks to wear for Halloween, which is an awesome fake holiday and which tomorrow is. Halloween. Other children may dream of dressing up as spiders, or witches, or hobos. Because it's Halloween all across this great land of ours tomorrow. Halloween, not to be confused with Story Book Day, which is not a fake holiday in America because it is lame. 

     So, fucked once again by kindergarten and the evil choice between fighting the stupid and ensuring our daughter doesn't feel hopelessly odd and left out, we must now come up with an additional costume based on an emergency favorite story book character, which we are having a tough time doing because we are frightened of, not delighted by, wolves and trolls and chubby brother-and-sister teams who shove old ladies into ovens. 

     According to the overinvolved, understimulated kindergarten party planners, making our original, excellent fairy queen ballerina ghost costume just wasn't challenging enough.

     Stupid kindergarten.

     In other dumb, nine percent of eligible voters still have not made up their minds. Oh here's a choice for you, intelligent, ethical leadership to dig you out of the ditch you've put yourself in or a flaming vat of lying dogshit. Hmm. Don't know? FAIL. Forfeit turn. Disallowed to vote. 

     Honestly, I don't care what the undecideds do; I just want them to go away. I want to stop hearing about them, their smug, coy "power," how they're the key to the election. Get the fuck out of the way already.

     Stupid.

     This, too, from today's boneheaded McPalin dolts.

     And this, from the Old (and I mean old) Guard.

     And this.

     Oh, and there's this crap to look forward to.

     All this, and so much more, in just one day. And I didn't even have to go off the blogs.

UPDATE 10/31/08

     God in heaven, this AP article puts the number of "persuadables" at 14% and clarifies who these people are: the accepted euphemism is "low-information voters," but I prefer the more accurate moniker, "stupid fuckers." 

Random anxieties, worries

     UPDATE: Barack Obama is suspending his campaign for a real, legitimate, heartbreaking reason. This trumps the tally of pitiful distractions below. Prayers to the Obama family tonight.

     As my mother used to warn when I was five and whining: tone. Tone.

1. Limbaugh and other conservative mouthpieces stirring the uglypot
2. Ricky Dicky Davis, Part A: spicing up said uglypot with stale Rev. Wright dogshit
3. McPalin attributing more credibility to some random fake plumber's assessment of their opponent as "socialist" than they do to anyone with an actual brain
4. Nancy Poopinfucker making her own crappy contribution to the uglypot with her assertion that fully one-third of Virginia isn't real
5. Ricky Dicky Davis, Part B: implying there's something sinister about millions of people just like me and M donating an average of $86 to Obama/Biden
6. Bachmann Bachmann Bachmann

     God, there's too much to fully catalog. On top of it, I don't feel well. My energy is waning and the I'm eating more hydrocodone than ever. A asked tonight when I am going to feel better, because she wants to go places with me. My time with her lately has been limited to snuggling on the big blue sofa, or in bed. 

     Anxious and worried. 

Pulling my hair out

     Figuratively, literally. 

     I'm going to miss the first hour or so of the debate tonight due to novel workshop. My money is on McCain raising the Ayers thing, using the same transparently flawed logic he has brazenly tried to advance for the last ten days: he'll claim he doesn't care about some "washed up old domestic terrorist" or Obama's gay Connecticut marriage to Ayers, blessed by that scary Rev. Wright who hates America, but that the American people of whom Obama is not one deserve to hear the truth and that it's a question of truthfulness and truthiness and truishness, which ryhmes with Jewishness, which reminds him, did you see that the socialist Obama's own Negro supporter, Jesse Jackson, is warning that the terrorist Obama administration will abolish Israel from the face of the earth, and every grandma and grandpa in the Sunshine State had better run for their lives? I'm just sayin.

     Elsewhere, from atop my head, my hair continues to flee. Trying as desperately as my man Joe Biden to sidestep the combover. I've asked M to let me know when it's too sketchy to ignore -- when the part is a bit too wide, too white -- so I can avoid embarrassing myself and everyone else and put a hat on already.

     Was all weepy and hurty yesterday. I think it must have something to do with the decimated blood cells... I felt tres fragile all day, and fussy last night. Keeping up with economic and campaign news didn't help, but I'm a junkie. Today's better, me-wise; the economy persists in sucking out loud.

     And the infant mortality rate is, shamefully, higher than that of 28 other countries.

     And the Dow is down 735 points.

     And we'll all be eating beanie-weenies and bark inside a month.

     But, yeah, come on, McCain. Tell me all about Bill Ayers.

Are we done now?

     Newsflash: Sarah Palin abused her power and is in violation of Alaska state law. Essentially, Troopergate is a mini-scandal about unethical behavior. Unethical behavior from Sarah Palin. Could we not have dispensed with this nitwit Jerry Springer episode before it was thrust onto the world stage? We could have. But we were being mavericky in our selection of an unknown as a running mate, and we were too giddy with our silly surprising selves to save The Country We Love Above Ourselves the embarrassment of the Palin Posse even though we knew -- or pretended we knew -- about this investigation before naming her and her dipshit husband and her nineteen children or grandchildren or auxiliary children or whoever they are to the ticket. 

     Newsflash: (Didn't we already do one of these?) John McCain makes an attempt, at last, albeit halfassed, after weeks of stoking the flames, to tamp down the seething mass of ignorant hysteria that is his base by refuting that Barack Obama is -- what could be worse? -- an Arab. "He is a decent family man, a citizen." 'Cause, you know, there are no Arabs who are decent, who have families, who are men, who are citizens of the United States or elsewhere. So refuckinglax, everybody, even though you have John McCain's personal permission to be as angry as the six-headed beast that you are. Go ahead, get furiouser and furiouser, work yourselves into a frenzy, imply that Obama is a treasonous terrorist liar, but for God's sake, keep your collective voice down to a low roar and do it respectfully. And whatever you do, don't call him an Arab.

     Newsflash: And yet they're still at it. SaPa is still urging crowds to "connect the dots" between Obama and "his associations" and that insufferable nugget Tucker Bounds is blaming the lynch mob venom at GOP rallies on Obama's economic policies and the current fiscal crisis. WTF? Obama is, as always, gracious and calm. (Warning re: the ABC blog link -- the dingbats come out of the woodwork to comment; brace yourself for stupidity on parade.)

     News Summary: Why can't we skip the voting part and declare this thing over already?

Welcome to the Not So Great Depression

     Oh, I was all set to write funny, but then I turned on the TV and watched the whole goddamn economy crumble in, like, an hour, and now I'm in no mood.

     Brothers and sisters all over the world are in a blind spastic panic, unloading their investments and driving down the markets. Cashing out their bank accounts. Stuffing bills under mattresses. Opening wide to tweezer gold fillings into little cups. Pilfering their own copper pipes. Jesus.

     Rumor at school is that SaPa is coming to our little hamlet for a Hate-a-Thon sometime in the next week. I'm still waiting for her to explain (or be asked -- psssst, Couric: HINT) how Obama will "diminish the prestige of the presidency," while the close association of her own snowbilly lapdog Tard (Todd?) with the AIP will somehow elevate the reputation that W has methodically shredded in the last eight years. Grumpy Old McCain is back at it with the Ayers crap in a shameless effort to salvage a Straight Talk Express whose wheels came off weeks ago and whose smoldering carcass is still stinking up the bottom of the canyon. 

     None of this is enough to really do me in today -- I'm feeling like a shiny new nickel after the bloodsucking a couple days ago. But the cumulative effect, combined with the attempt to demonize, otherize, that one-ize, didja know he's black, wink? the honorable, patriotic, classy Obamas is so far beyond despicable I can't really get my head around it. I've been politically aware since about 1968, and I've never, never been so saddened by overt ugliness such as the McCain camp is launching, and its rabid supporters lapping up like blood-starved hounds. It's gone beyond insinuation to straight-up racism and fear-mongering. [This links to an elegant articulation by Seth Abramson of the real danger and potential legal implications of Palin's inflammatory rhetoric. An informative -- and chilling -- read.]

     Please, Mrs. Palin, explain how this elevates the prestige of the presidency. 

     Sickening.

     Chemo is on for tomorrow; we're going to try alternating weeks and begging the insurance gods to pay for Procrit. 

My life as a vampire

     The blood-taking went well today. I've had transfusions before, but always in concert with surgery or hospitalization, meaning I recall very little of them. Today I was wide awake (for the most part) and a little queasy considering those crimson bags hanging above my head, their bloody tails snaking into my chest catheter. It's ghoulish, no doubt, but I'm thankful there are people willing to donate. It took about six hours. Afterwards, M and I stopped for fried chicken ("chicken on the bone," A calls it) and came home and watched the stock market crash. Then I slept for three hours. 

     The theory is that I will feel -- what? perky? -- by tomorrow. Chemo's on for Friday. Yeehaw.

     My sister is on her way over to watch the Town Hall Debate, a genteel euphemism considering how thuggish the McPalin campaign has become over the last few days. Inciting violence now, they are -- openly, it would seem -- against anyone and everyone who doesn't favor their flavor of Kool-Aid. Obama. Biden. Journalists. Democrats. People with brains. Sarah Palin is a pig. McCain is a hypocrite (he voted for the bear DNA project he derided as pork in the first debate; that's the least of it) and a caricature of himself; a man who has sold his soul. I can't imagine his first act every morning isn't throwing up in shame. 

     Hopie's here -- showtime.

Foundationally I'm just ill about it

     It is a terrible thing to lose one's words -- or not to have a word.

     I guess in that case, one must invent a word.

     In the course of the last couple of horrifying/screamingly funny Katie Couric convos, SaPa has thrust into the lexicon  foundationally, which, near as I can tell, means something akin to fundamentally, though in the non-context of her word salad could also mean basically; theoretically; in my pretend fairy-world; or they told me not to say fundamentally because it'll remind people I'm a batshit fundamentalist extremist, so I'm gonna throw out something that starts with an 'f' and no one will notice, especially if I wrinkle my nose.

     I just want to mention a couple of things I'll be looking for tonight. First, everyone is counseling Joe Biden to hold the hell off lest he appear to be condescending to or, God forbid, attacking his delicate female opponent. I think this counsel is patently sexist, especially considering the McCain goons have been instructed to "let 'er loose" and are, at this very moment, creekside in Sedona feeding her red moose meat and blasting the Rocky anthem. So, um. How come she gets to chew Biden't ankles with her wolverine teeth, but he's not allowed to respond in kind? She's allowed -- expected -- to use wise-ass sarcasm, but he's not? Yes, I want to see him be respectful; I expect that from her, too. No, he does NOT have to be, for Christ's sake, deferential, or worse, reverential, as some pundits have suggested. (I assume they know what the word means, since they're on the teevee.) Reverent because she's a she? Respectful because she's a mother? Polite because she can't take it, or because it would be ungallant of him not to roll over and let the little lady scratch him to pieces? Sexist sexist sexist.

     Second, the format heavily accommodates SaPa's perceived strength -- that ability to say shit without saying anything at all. (Why is that valued, again? I always forget.) "In our great nation of America" is her new "um," replacing the "here in Alaska" phrase she repeated so frequently in her gubernatorial debates as a placeholder while she gathers her... her thoughts? Whatev. Anyway, my understanding is that there is no room for Ifill to ask follow-up questions of the type our Gotcha Gal Couric asked, which exposed Palin for the shallow, incurious, ill informed beauty pageant contestant she is. Over and over and over again (thanks, CBS!). 

     The anti-intellectuals will say she slammed it home. They'll say she's just like them. I say they're exactly right. Which makes my argument that the uneducated stupidshit should be nowhere near the Oval Office. 

     Heaven forbid we elect an educated, intelligent person who's actually been paying attention.

     Loaded for bear. I got your loaded for bear right here, cretins.

     UPDATE: Meanwhile, McCain seems to have foundationally misplaced his entire brain. On MSNBC this morning, McCain foundationally forgets that he foundationally voted FOR the bill he now says foundationally puts us on the brink of economic disaster, foundationally speaking. Call me crazy, but I suspect this is new GOP strategery: forget the multiple crises we face, focus on driving thinking people criminally insane with mindbending doublespeak. 

Paul Newman and yard signs

     We're getting a short reprieve after two days of rain, so M and A took her new magnifying glass and a sketch pad out to the park to see what they might see. I'm reading about the passing of Paul Newman, as elegant and graceful a person as has ever been put on earth. I admire his life for a great many reasons, primarily his determination to just do what he did, all self-deprecating and careful to resist the ego trappings inherent in movie acting. I admire his long marriage to a woman who was clearly his equal in every way. I admire his charity work -- Newman's Own, according the the New York Times, has donated over $175 million to charitable causes, and his foundation for pediatric cancer camps has blossomed into a global effort. 

     What I admire most about him, I think, is his devotion to authenticity. There does not exist an interview in which he seems to be trying to impress. He is so completely unselfconscious that he can tell a reporter that, with age, he has *not* become what (we presume he and) the rest of us aspire to: less angry, less judgmental, etc. Certainly other people have observed -- my father among them -- that getting older not only illuminates more of our flaws, but actually exacerbates them. I know I am becoming more myself the older I get: more outspoken about what I dislike and disagree with, crankier, shorter-tempered, less willing to put up with shit. Less able to rein it in. I guess in my interior life I am becoming more authentic, but I still will say "yes" because I think it's what others want to hear, or hold my tongue in the interest of being polite when what the situation really calls for is for me to call someone on their assumptions or ugliness. A skirmish.

     All this to say, my friend Amy and I are kind of despairing of the lack of yard signs in our city this election season, and I believe I know what's going on. On the Democratic ticket we have an African American man; on the GOP, a white woman and a flailing old crank. Of the four candidates, it is considered impolite to talk about their defining characteristics, for fear of entering inadvertently into a conversation about racism, sexism, or ageism. (Or anti-intellectualism, aka stupid-as-fuckism, or religious extremism, or poor taste in hair, woops, that's sexist, God, the shit really piles up when considering SaPa). So. We know not where our neighbors stand on these candidates, because to expose our preferences in our yards is to literally stake out a dare. I dare you to tell my what you don't like about Obama. I dare you to insinuate McCain is too old. I dare you to speak the truth about Palin, a painful truth I already know, which need not be aired in polite company: that she is an embarrassment to all serious, thinking people. 

     If the tickets comprised Joe Biden, Joe Biden, Joe Biden, and Joe Biden, this town would be yard signed and bumper stickered to comic effect. We're used to talking about that kind of candidate, the one who's so familiar to us personally that it forces us to talk about the issues (but not abortion, still off-limits). 

     There seems to me a reticence in my little corner of the world to wear your politics on your sleeve this election year. It's too personally revealing, like dropping trou and flashing the neighbors, then daring them to admit they saw you do it by flashing you right back.

     It would feel really good to put up a sign. Not just supportive of my candidates, but a gesture of personal integrity. Authenticity.

     I bet Paul Newman didn't worry about yard signs. I bet he just wore a hat.

Train wreck

     I cannot bring myself to look away... The colossal spectacle up the road in Warshin'ton, as SaPa calls it, is stunning and, if it lacked the potential to put us all in the poorhouse, might actually be anthropologically fascinating. 

     Palin was less articulate than a seventh grader in her responses to Katie Couric. She is an insult to small town America, not a reflection of it. As a person who grew up in a rural town of fewer than 300 people (artists, writers, policy wonks, thinkers -- some Democrats, some Republicans -- all engaged) in an area of the South that was (and is) peppered with such hamlets, I take personal umbrage, because I can do that, at the notion that Sarah Palin is remotely representative of Tiny Town USA. She is a fool. If that makes me a condescending elitist, I'll take up that mantle with glee. 

     What's happening on Capitol Hill tonight, after McCain mucked up the works, is too grotesque to ponder. That doesn't stop me from hitting refresh four times an hour at HuffPo, Wonkette, Politico, Washington Post, and NYT. The only possible good I can see coming of any of this is that President Obama will be in the White House to truncate our depression, and our Depression.

     Chemo #2 tomorrow morning. I'm hydrating. 

     Note to self: this weekend, some thoughts on what I have faith in, including people and books, because it feels important at this moment in history to be really clear about that.

Boondoggle!

     This will be a rant about a thing that bugs the everlivin' crap outta me. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me a giant waste of funds. No, it's not the 700 billion dollar bailout. Trillion. Whatever. No, it's not the millions in earmarks Palin requested so she can build a widow's walk atop the manse in Wasilla, the better to see the Kremlin from. No, it's not even the relentless lies the McCain/Palin campaign is paying tens of millions of dollars for, under the guise of political advertising, to pollute our public airwaves.

     This is insidious. This is personal.

     This is the big fat check M stroked this morning for kindergarten field trips and "special programs." There are ten -- ten -- planned this year, two of which are free. The hit parade includes:

• $5.00 for a pumpkin-picking junket to a farm in October 
• $4.00 for a day at one of the stuffiest history museums in the South
• $13.00 for three plays about Pocahontas, Rumplestiltskin, and Rikki-tikki-tavi 
• $15.00 for a "young scientists" program; there are no details about this one
• $1.00 for another farm visit in May
• $7.00 for -- are you ready? -- a trip to the local botanical gardens. Because as every parent knows, five year olds loves them some botanical gardens.

     This is a public, inner-city school with a significant population of free-lunch kids. And they want parents to fork over $45.00 for what? For kindergartners to gaze at nineteenth-century sculpture and plants? 

     Full disclosure: A was in the pre-K program at this school last year; same deal. I emailed the principal to offer alternatives to these cost-prohibitive excursions: poll the parents, I suggested, and take the children to see what people do all day at work. I'm in graduate school, let me show them what that looks like. Annie's mother is an artist -- let's visit her studio. Plus, this is a burden on our household budget, and I am certain we're not the only ones. There is no opt-out feature; no Plan B for children whose parents can't pay up, or think it best not to. I never got a response from the principal. 

     Fucking hell, what is wrong with taking kindergartners on a nature walk around the block to collect leaves and squeal at bugs? They gotta herd them onto a bus and schlepp them to places only people with blue hair and powdered faces get off on? For money?

     Nothing against old people, but my child is five. I suspect her interests are a bit different.

     Can you imagine having more than one child in this school? "Pony up $135 you didn't count on spending this month or your children will be left out, identified as the losers they are, teased mercilessly and ostracized for life." Man, I feel for the families who didn't budget for it and just cannot afford it.

     M (wisely?) wrote the check and got it into A's bookbag before I ever saw the extortion note. So much for feeling all smug about paying bills and having a little pad through the end of the month. 

     So, yeah. Kindergarten can suck it, again.

Offbeat observation: McCain's eyes

     Amy and I talked yesterday about the bizarre change in John McCain's eyes over the last week or two, at least since the convention. It's not only the stunned, empty, expressionless gaze -- it's the color of his eyes, or rather, the lack of it. He has blue-blue-blue eyes, or did have. Lately, though, it looks as though he's either been sporting deep brown contacts or skimming the top of Cindy's ivory-handled pill dispenser. 

     When I asked my sister last night if she'd noticed McCain's eyes, she immediately said, "Yes! They're all pupil -- all dilated pupil!" So, it's not just me.

     Here's my theory: The geniuses pulling his strings have decided it would be suicide if he came out wearing glasses, which I cannot believe he doesn't actually need, considering his robotic attachment to the TelePrompTer and frequent misreading thereof. So, geniuses took the opportunity to fit him with contact lenses... but not your ordinary contact lenses! No, these are the kind used by Hollywood stars to appear easy, open, and engaged. The principle is based on the biological fact that babies' eyes are huge in relation to their faces because large eyes engender in humans feelings of love and an urge to protect. (Think about those infuratingly adorable Hummel figurines you want to smash to smithereens.) And in soap operas -- I know whereof I speak here -- actresses routinely use big brown contacts to make their pupils appear dilated during love scenes; one of those involuntary biological cues to potential mates that we are interested.

     So. John McCain. At once trying to look younger (no glasses), garner love/empathy (a robotic Hummel), and telegraph a real, human soul. 

     Too bad those contacts don't actually sharpen his vision, in any conceivable way.

Willful ignorance: just plain stupid

     If I said all I have to say about McCain/Palin, this blog would self-immolate. So I'll stick to this, a not especially original observation:

     Remember when it was, like, fashionable in, like, high school, to pretend you didn't make good grades and weren't one of the smart kids and the only thing you were really interested in deepening was your Hawaiian Tropic Tan? 

     Remember how you were pretending?

     Remember the truly stupid kids who gleefully basked in their dumbitude?

     Have you seen the 1983 Wasilla High School yearbook? Wait, I mean, the Palin administration?